Measured survey of your project location, building etc. as appropriate for the nature of your project;
Drawings of the building(s) etc. as they are at the moment;
Design drawings of the project based on your brief;
Usually, revisions to those drawings based on further discussions and your “second thoughts”;

PLANNING PERMISSION

Preparation of drawings for a Planning Application to the local authority, if required;
Possibly preliminary discussions with the local authority Planning Officer;
Completing the necessary forms and making the Planning Application.

BUILDING REGULATIONS APPROVAL

Design of your project for compliance with the Building Regulations and provision of the necessary drawings and documentation in support of an application for approval, including:-
Thermal design and calculations; and
Structural design and calculations.

INITIAL CONTACT

You are invited to contact us by telephone, email, letter, fax or you can knock on our door.

Generally we are quite happy to come to you and discuss your project on-site. It is often best to do this as we can then better advise you on the viability of your project and possibly discover any potential difficulties. We may even suggest alternatives for your review. We make no charge for the first visit.
Hopefully we will be able to help you with any decisions on the form of your proposals.

QUOTATION

On our return to the office, we write to you giving a description of the work we would expect to undertake on your project and provide you with a budget estimate of our fees.

We also try to give you an idea of what other fees may be applicable, for example Planning Application fees or Building Regulations Application fees, which are payable to the local authority.

Generally our fee estimate will be offered as a fixed fee proposal valid for 3 months.

PROGRESS

If you accept our quotation and are happy to proceed, we ask you to confirm in writing and then we will call you and arrange a mutually convenient time and date for us to visit the project and carry out any necessary survey work.

Once we have a survey drawn up, we can then start the design process. This is generally based on discussions with you and will consist, initially, of a drawing showing the main points of the proposed works. We will send you a copy of this design for you to review, discuss with anyone else who may have an interest in the project and for you to modify as you wish. You may choose to come to see us in the office, ask us to visit you at the project location or discuss matters over the telephone.

Once we have settled on a design we can then obtain the necessary permissions.

CONSTRUCTION

We are pleased, if required, to prepare construction drawings and specification and tender documents so that competitive prices can be obtained from an number of contractors.

Following on from the award of the work to your chosen contractor, we can offer supervision of the works as they progress and the assessment of staged payments to the contractor.

SOME SMALL-PRINT

Whilst, generally, a competent and experienced contractor will be able to construct your extension or conversion from the Building Regulations Application drawings and documents, this is not their purpose, and there may be aspects of you project which are not adequately covered in them. We can prepare working drawings if required but these may entail additional fees.

Our normal Terms and Conditions include, but are not limited to, the following:

Accounts will be submitted at regular intervals during the progress of the works, i.e: at monthly intervals where appropriate or at certain landmark stages of the project such as on submission of Planning Application, on submission of Building Regulation Approval, on appointment of Building Contractor and on completion of works.

Should work on the scheme be delayed or suspended for any reason then a fee will be payable for the work completed to date.

Accounts should be settled within 14 days of issue. Any unpaid sums may be subject to an interest charge at a rate of 1.5% per month.

All quotations are exclusive of disbursements, out of pocket expenses, which will be charged at cost, travelling in connection with the project and VAT which will be charged at the current rate. The client will be responsible for the payments of fees directly to Local or other Authorities.

Please note: we will do our best to obtain Planning Consent if necessary, but even if, after discussions with the Planning Officer we secure a reccommendation for approval, it is not unknown for committees to go against such a reccommendation and issue a refusal. Our fees are not contingent on a successful application.